Our Story

Gypsy Death and You is a Philadelphia-based, two-piece, shoegaze band that we, Emily Cahill and Alex Wilson, formed during our freshman year at Drexel University. A few years ago, we self-released our first album, EP no. 1. We produced the entire EP ourselves, including hand-made CD envelopes, special-edition stickers, and CDs burned on our personal laptops. Even though the entire album was created in our two-bedroom apartment, it received immense positive feedback. It allowed us not only to headline many fantastic shows in Philadelphia, but also to join two other amazing bands on an awesome East Coast tour during the summer. We are so thankful that our music has reached so many people and given us many amazing opportunities.

But let’s get to the good news: we’ve just finished recording our second EP!

We’ve been laboring over this for a year and are super excited to finally share it with the world. For this release, we would like to go larger-scale than our DIY home operation and be able to give you all a high-quality project that we can be proud of as a follow-up to our last EP. But there is a catch! We don’t have enough money to actually release the album! Getting CDs pressed is expensive, and spending a large amount of money at one time is currently out of the picture for us. With funds raised through this campaign, we would be able to master, press and duplicate CDs, pay for registration of the album with the US Copyrights office, and create t-shirts to be sold with the album at the release. With the funding, the new EP could be released in May of 2012!

The Impact

So what happens if we can’t reach our goal? Fortunately, Indie Go Go will still pay us the amount we have raised, with an increased deduction of 9% from our funds for the company. However, a decreased amount of money will have a serious impact on our project.

Here’s the deal: We need to raise AT LEAST half of our goal in order to even press the CDs and create physical copies at all. Without that amount of money, we could be sitting on the finished song files indefinitely. In addition, if we do not reach our goal, we are still required to fulfill all of the prizes, some of which the decreased funding may not cover, such as t-shirt production. Instead of earning money, we could very well be losing funds, therefore delaying our release even further. Please help us make this risk worth it! After all, doesn’t the idea of an album-less Gypsy Death eating ramen for the next year make you sad?

What We Need & What You Get

What we need is simple: to raise $1,000 in 70 days in order to have a successful release of our album. After all, the only thing keeping us from releasing it is the prohibitive cost. You may be thinking, “$1,000 is a lot of money! What’s it all going to?” We can assure you this is not an arbitrary number. Re-framed, a $1000 goal would equate to us raising approximately $15 a day over our 70-day limit. Now, that’s not so bad! After extensive research, we’ve created a break down of costs and posted it here for you, to assure you that your money will not go to waste!

$210 would be spent on copyrighting the material on the EP with the US Copyright Office. That is the cost to register a 6-song album, costing $35 per song.

Approximately $550 would be spent on the manufacturing and duplication of the actual album. This is the quote cost to press 300 music CDs, with full color printing and envelopes from DiscMakers, the leading company (and one of the least expensive companies) in album duplication.

$144 would be spent on t-shirts to be sold at the release, as well as online and other live performances. This is the cost of fifty Hanes 100% Combed Ring Spun Cotton T-shirts in various sizes. After we have purchase the blank t-shirts in bulk, we will be screen-printing them with an original band design.

The remainder of the money, $86, would go to two places. Some would be deducted from our total as the fee that Indie Go Go takes from our funding (3% of earnings, aka $30 if the project reaches it’s goal. 9% of earnings if the project does not reach it’s goal!) Any remaining money would go towards the mastering of the album before it is pressed, which is usually a $500+ cost. Although the remains would not pay for the entire mastering, it would help alleviate our personal costs. Another great thing about Indie Go Go is that it allows us to raise more money than our goal. If we were able to raise money above our $1000 goal to completely cover our costs, we would be forever grateful!

Rest assured you will also reap benefits for helping to fund our album! Any donation of $10 or more will get a free download of the new album once it is released. In addition, we’ve come up with some special, personalized prizes that are one-of-a-kind, will never be reproduced, and won’t be available at any other point in time! The majority of the prizes we will be making ourselves, by hand, in the true DIY fashion that started this band. Some of the awesome things we’re offering include:

• Hand drawn portraits of you by the band

• A recording of us performing a secret cover song never heard before

• A mix CD of our favorite songs, made especially for you

• One of our t-shirts, financed by this project, in your size

• A video of us performing a song with your name in it

• Us making dinner for you!

• The pride of knowing that you are supporting independent artists and local music scenes.

So check them out and donate what you can to make our album a reality!

Other Ways You Can Help

Donating isn’t the only way for you to help us on this quest. There are many additional things you can do!

First off, get the word out about our project! Email your friends, post the link on your Facebook, post it on your blog or tweet about it! One doesn’t need to have an Indie Go Go account to donate, so sharing and funding is quick and easy! In addition, Indie Go Go offers some awesome share tools that will create a widget for Facebook and Twitter, and email! The more people we can get on board, the better. Even the smallest donations build up over time, and there’s no way we can do this without the help of all of our friends and their networks. The number one way you can help, in addition to donating, is to share our project and get more people involved.

In addition, follow our progress blog in Indie Go Go, our Twitter, or our Facebook page. We’ll be posting frequently about what we’re up to and the progress we’re making on the funding. It’s important that you know that we continue to work hard on the project, so we’re going to be keeping you all informed throughout the entire process! We also often ask for feedback from our fans and supporters. Ranging from the colors of our t-shirts to what photographs you think we should use, we want to hear your suggestions and what you’ve got to say! Make sure to check our sites out!

Thank you so much for your support! We can’t wait to share this album with all of you!

- Emily and Alex, Gypsy Death and You

Photographs by Corinne Ryan

Video by Alex Braddock